Peer Suspended Over President Obama ‘Bounty’

Someone doesn’t like the Obamanut. In the UK the House of Lords has suspended a peer, over reports that he offered a £10m “bounty” for the capture of the US President. For now the Labour Party has suspended Lord Nazir Ahmedafter claims he was said to have offered the cash for the capture of Barack Obama and his predecessor George W Bush.

This all stems from a comment made about America offering a reward for a Pakistani radical. This apparently ticked off the peer.

Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, who founded the violent extremist group Lashkar e Taiba, is blamed for the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks in which 166 people were killed. A Labour spokesman said: “We have suspended Lord Ahmed pending investigation.

“If these comments are accurate, we utterly condemn these remarks which are totally unacceptable. “The international community is rightly doing all in its power to seek justice for the victims of the Mumbai bombings and halt terrorism.” Sky News

And in a newspaper report the peer called the bounty an insult to Muslims. “If the US can announce a reward of £10m for the captor of Hafiz Saeed, I can announce a bounty of £10m on President Obama and his predecessor George Bush,” he is reported to have said. Sky News

Of course, Lord Ahmed denies he offered the bounty, instead he said he had told the meeting that Mr Bush and ex-Labour Prime Minister Tony Blairshould be prosecuted for war crimes. No one from the Labour Party talked to him before the suspension.

After university, he ran a chain of shops and became a property developer while burnishing his political career by serving as a magistrate, chairing the South Yorkshire Labour Party and working as a non-executive director of Rotherham Health Authority. In 1992 he was the founder of the British Muslim Councillors’ Forum. He was involved in the Government’s Forced Marriage Working Group and led a government delegation to Mecca in 2000.

Yet his political career is full of controversies. Back in 2007, he hit the headlines when he criticised the awarding of a knighthood to Salman Rushdie. Then in 2008, he denied rumors he planned to defect to the Conservative Party, alleging the speculation was being spread by a Labour minister who was a “sad loser”. Lord Ahmed was also jailed for 12 weeks for dangerous driving in 2009 after sending and receiving text messages minutes before he was involved in a fatal motorway crash. Lesson learned: One doesn’t speak ill of one Obamanut…..